The Evening Standard interviewed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in an article titled “Wikipedia will be written by AI; "
“In the discussion with the Wikipedia community that I've seen so far it seems that people are cautious as we know that the existing models are not good enough. But there are others who are interested," Wales said.
"I think we're still a long way from: 'ChatGPT, please write a Wikipedia entry for the Empire State building,' but I don't know how far we are from that, certainly closer than I would have thought two years ago."
Wales said that while ChatGPT has captured the public's imagination in recent weeks, his own testing shows that there are still many flaws. "One of the issues with the existing ChatGPT is what experts call 'hallucinations' I call lies."
“He has a tendency to make stuff up out of nowhere, which is very bad for Wikipedia — that's not okay. We have to be very careful with this….”
But while full AI authoring won't be available in the near future, Wikipedia is looking at ways that AI technology could play a role in improving the encyclopedia in the coming months.
"I think there are some interesting opportunities... A person could find bugs, but they would have to read and think about it, which our community could find very useful."
